Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Runaway demand for artificial intelligence hardware is draining the global memory chip supply and driving up the cost of smartphones, laptops, and other personal electronics. Contract prices for conventional DRAM are set to jump 90 to 95 percent quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter of 2026, while NAND flash is forecast to rise 55 to 60…
Amazon just committed roughly $200 billion in capital spending for 2026, a bet so large it spooked investors even as the company posted strong holiday-quarter results. That figure lands against a backdrop of surging global demand for data center capacity, with one research firm projecting the sector could top $650 billion in spending this year…
The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump stripped the White House of one tariff tool, but President Trump responded within hours by announcing a 15 percent global tariff rate using alternative legal authorities. For Michigan, home to the densest concentration of auto manufacturing and parts suppliers in North America, the rapid policy…
The UK government has scrapped a £950 million electric vehicle rapid charging fund originally announced by the Conservatives, replacing it with £400 million spread over five years. The decision comes as industry groups warn that planning bottlenecks at British ports are delaying infrastructure needed to meet net zero targets. Taken together, the reduced funding and…
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget for New York City includes a proposed 9.5% property tax rate increase, a move that would hit more than three million homes and over 100,000 commercial buildings. The plan has drawn sharp criticism from residents and political figures who say it contradicts the mayor’s campaign pledges to…
Robert Kiyosaki, the financial author behind “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” is betting big on Bitcoin and predicting it will reach $250,000, a price level he believes will cement the cryptocurrency’s dominance over gold as a store of value. At the same time, he forecasts gold will climb to $27,000 per ounce, a target he credits…
Two semiconductor giants are racing to shape the artificial intelligence chip market, but their strategies could not be more different. Broadcom Inc. has built its AI business around custom silicon designed for hyperscale cloud operators, while Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) sells general-purpose accelerators that compete head-to-head with Nvidia. With both companies reporting record revenue and…
Blue Owl Capital has halted redemptions in its retail-focused private credit fund OBDC II, a decision that crystallizes the tension between illiquid software-backed loans and the steady cash access promised to everyday investors. The move follows a $1.4 billion asset sale earlier in 2025 to cover withdrawal requests, and it arrives just as the firm…
President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he would raise his proposed worldwide tariff from 10% to 15%, escalating a trade standoff less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court struck down his previous tariff program in a 6-3 ruling. The move, disclosed on Truth Social, pushes the tariff rate to the legal ceiling allowed…
The Bureau of Economic Analysis cut its estimate of fourth-quarter 2018 GDP growth to 2.2 percent on an annualized basis, well below the 3 percent benchmark the Trump White House had celebrated as proof that its economic agenda was working. The downward revision, driven by more complete source data and methodological adjustments applied during the…